360 NOTES ON THE 



and tail dark plumbeous, passing behind into dusky; tail 

 tipped with yellow; primaries; except the first, margined with 

 hoary; a short maxillary stripe, a narrow crescent on the 

 infero-posterior quarter of the eye, white; secondaries with 

 horny tips like red sealing wax. 



Length, 7.25; wing, 4.05; tail, 2.60. 



Habitat, North America generally. 



Family LANIID^. 



LANIUS BOREALIS Vieillot. (621.) 

 NORTHERN SHRIKE. 



This is by no means a very common visitor in migration, 

 reaching Minnesota about the middle of October, and remain- 

 ing variously in the latitude of Minneapolis from four to six 

 weeks, but not very infrequently far into December. It occa- 

 sionally remains during the entire winter in the lower or 

 southern tier of counties, as has been reliably reported to me 

 by Dr. Hvoslef. He has sent me the following data of its 

 observation in his locality: — March 26th and December 31st, 

 1883; December 7th, 1884; January 31st, 1885; February 3d, 

 1886. 



Prof. C. L. Herrick found them "very common at Lake 

 Shatek in October, 1877." December 18th, 1870, and April 

 5th, 1876, are the two extremes in my own records of 29 years. 

 Mr. Washburn did not see this species in the northern part of 

 the State. At the latest above date of my own observations, 

 I saw one feeding upon a mouse which he fixed in the crotch 

 of a tree upon which he perched. 



In hunting for mice it hovers in the same manner as the 

 Sparrow Hawk does, but I have never seen it in the act of im- 

 paling its victim on a thorn bush or a sliver projecting from a 

 stub or fence rail, as I have seen the White-Rumped Shrike do 

 many times. 



They have all gone further north before the 1st of May, so 

 far as I have been able to learn. They have become less and 

 less observed in the settled sections of the State from year to 

 year of late, as with several other species which were formerly 

 common. 



SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



Above, light bluish-ash, obscurely soiled with reddish -brown; 

 sides of the crown, scapulars, and upper tail coverts, hoary 

 white; beneath white; the breast with traverse lines; wings 



